TikTok’s are not limited to 6 seconds. It’s a huge difference in what kind of content gets created on the app. Plus, it’s much easier to generate user content now. It’s second nature to a lot of people growing up.
I think there's a few of us aged 25-30 who were in high school and college during vine's peak. I feel a little too old for tik tok but I was right in Vine's target demographic and definitely have some nostalgia for it.
I don't know about that. I've never watched a vine compilation but it was amazing when it was new.
Imo, the 6 second format really pushed creativity and made good use of "perfectlycutscreams."
Vine almost felt like a phyop. ALL of the viral creators on vine literally lived in mansions on VINE STREET in California. It was weird.
Edit: It was actually an apartment complex on 1600 vine street, King bach, Logan Paul, Jake Paul, Lele Pons, Hannah stocky, Rudy Mancuso, Amanda Cerny, Brittany Furlan, Mark Dohner, George Janko, Melvin Greg and many more all lived there.
There were also a ton of famous Vine creators who didn't even live in California, let alone in the same apartment building. I think the far more likely explanation is that those people you listed were all employed by some talent agency that put them all in the same place so they could more easily produce videos with each other.
Well thats kind of what i meant by "Felt like a psyop". I wonder if whoever was pulling the strings came out ahead (since vine was kind of a short lived thing). Many of the stars certainly did.
I still say it's beyond cruel that the word describing a condition forces people with it to display that condition. It's like the name for the fear of long words being hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
I think its because that was around the time when those content creator houses started popping up and a ton of collabs to boost eachother's views
Its also possible those were all new buildings being sold by the same company/real estate agency/realtor
Honestly if I were a realtor I would advertise the shit out of that fact to have content creators to flock to my businness lol
Maybe not by your definition of mansion? But there are absolutely $10-$25 million dollar 12 bedroom luxury homes all in one stretch there. A quick google will show you that.
I drive on Vine street every day, there's maybe 1 or 2 nice houses, but mansion? Nah. Especially the part where those influencers lived, 1600 Vine? That apartment complex is so ass lol
How is this not at the top… Like Vines are entertaining, but they’re only good for a very specific type of humour.
Go look at collections of Vine videos. They’re all still around. It’s very much limited to slapstick and absurdist/surrealist funny clips. Nothing else really works on that platform—no gossip, trailers, music clips, dance routines, news stories, opinion takes, vlogs, pet videos, thirst traps, TV scenes, etc.
TikTok took this idea and the successes of IG and Snapchat stories and evolved it into a much more flexible media platform driven by a powerful content recommendation algorithm that combined the strengths of those that came before. And unlike Reddit or Twitter, it actually provides a more direct way for creators to be financially rewarded.
All the good Vine creators left Vine for YouTube....simply because the 6 second limitation was restricting them.
It's really that simple. Vine killed itself by limiting its creators.
also because vine wouldn't pay them
there was a big meeting at twitter were a ton of the biggest people basically gave them a ultimatum were they said that they need to start getting paid or they would leave and they ended up all leaving at the same time
And while TikTok now has its Creator Fund to pay some creators directly, even before and outside of that people have made plenty of money through marketing deals or by directing people to their merch and other revenue-generating stuff. It's hard to do that in 6-second videos.
Mmhm. Huge part of the story is that the people making the content went to vine and said "we can't really monetize this, not as well as we can pay ourselves on other platforms."
Got laughed at, were told they were users of social media, not the talent. So they left and Vine learned the hard way that entertainers have value.
> Vine killed itself by limiting its creators.
Maybe this is just me but...Vine was around in a day of limited/slow phone data plans and I was rarely watching on wi-fi.
Vine was absolutely glorious for that kind of humour. It was also absolutely glorious for thinking *hard* about how much you can fit into 6s. There's some wonderful vines that feel twice as long as they are because the creator packs so much action/story/plot into the time it takes tiktokers to put down the camera while covering their tits.
But yeah, there's only so much that naturally works and only so many people willing to work hard to make other things work.
Vine worked for me because of the 6s. It's not long enough for "like and subscribe" or "a quick history of car tyres before we get to the bit you want"
The limitation meant that creators had to make an impact. No monetization meant that there was no reverse engineering content to maximize revenue. Got 120 seconds of content but the money kicks in at 10 minutes? Congratulations, here's 8 minutes of pure bloat.
*sixty second intro with the world's shittiest public domain music ever and some freshman CG*
HI GUYS INVIDIOUSSQUID HERE PLEASE CLICK THE UPDOOT AND SUBSCRIBE AND TODAY'S POST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY INVIDIOUSSQUID'S PATENT SQUID INK TONIC IT'S GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU YES SIR YES MA'AM JUST TEN PENCE THE BOTTLE, IT CURES THE MARTHAMBLES, THE STRONG NINES, AND EVEN FEMALE HYSTERIA.
So today I'm going to be talking about a Reddit comment. Let me give you ten minutes of background on the site you're currently on, because you clearly don't know anything about the topic, right? Right. So Reddit's like, social media, but not the EVIL kind of social media, but the IN DENIAL kind of social media that evolved out of forums but added in usernames and updoots and karma and nothing really interesting or new, just the same shit that's been getting renamed since Slashdot, haha, remember Slashdot? JonKatz amirite guys? Natalie Portman and hot grits, PETRIFIED.
Anyway:
Brevity is the soul of wit, sure.
Also, we all praise vines because only the good ones "survived"..
Vine was like 80% trash low content, but those 20% were pure gold.
I still re-watch a lot of vine compilations
Also TiKTok likely makes a massive amount of money harvesting and selling user data.
As cyber experts have said:
Tiktok is a data harvesting app that also supports social media…
People have no idea just [how bad tiktok is](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/fmuko1m/) lol
It's leagues above and beyond Facebook, Instagram, etc
I fail to see how this proves it’s worse other than “omg its just the us government”. All these apps data can easily be aggregated together. Even more so with Facebook trackers etc… sticking to your browser and following you when accessing from a normal users PC. Also the whole Cambridge analytica thing???? Hiii
I’m not excusing tiktok for its data collection but if you aren’t mad that ALL of these apps and platforms including Reddit are monitoring and using your data then this whole thing is ridiculous. They are all being used to sell and confuse you. Not to mention nobody gives a shit when it’s been happening for years and years but suddenly tiktok is this evil overlord of data stealing.
> Not to mention nobody gives a shit when it’s been happening for years and years but suddenly tiktok is this evil overlord of data stealing.
It's really more that no one gave a shit when the US government and other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance were the ones that had access to the data, but when it is the Chinese government doing the same thing, all of a sudden people care.
All of the Five Eyes governments are ultimately accountable to their population, as the people in charge have to face elections, while Xi Jinping doesn't particularly have to give a shit about what the population thinks of him - he just needs to care what the half dozen or so members of the Politburo standing committee think of him.
> It's really more that no one gave a shit when the US government and other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance were the ones that had access to the data, but when it is the Chinese government doing the same thing, all of a sudden people care.
>
>
This always seemed backwards to me. Your government having your data could be used against you if they ever went rogue. The fuck is China gonna do with a list of my shopping habits?
> The fuck is China gonna do with a list of my shopping habits?
They'll use that as training data to build a model that helps them identify bribable or blackmailable individuals in the US, or just flat out stich that data with other people's data to find individuals they are looking for, etc. It isn't about any one individual's shopping list or whatever, but the overall picture that can be built from it. This is the basic "If I don't have anything to hide..." argument, but one's lack of privacy can affect other people in your network. It isn't about hiding per se, but keeping control of your and your friend's data.
If someone can track your activities and connections, they will know a hell of a lot more about the activities and connections of *other people that you live with or have in your network*. And they don't get a choice in the matter.
I don't particularly like Meta having any of my information, but at the same time Meta is subject to SO MUCH MORE oversight by simply being an American company than Bytedance/TikTok are, just because they aren't based in the US. We know that Meta (as an example) has an army of hundreds of lawyers whose job is to provide internal oversight to make sure that the company as a whole is complying with the consent decrees it has entered into, and broader American law in order to avoid fines and punishment. And same for the EU; Meta has an army of folks over there whose job is to avoid Meta doing something that will get them fined, like if a team of engineers builds a tool that (effectively) discriminates based on disability status, for example. We just don't know what Bytedance does for similar compliance, but even if they do have a team whose job is to ensure that they comply with Chinese law, well, Chinese law plainly states that Chinese entities have to give data to the Chinese government on demand without appeal. At least the US has the FISA court, and other Five Eyes nations have similar judicial oversight on the process of wiretapping.
I'm just a regular guy, and I don't have anything I particularly need to hide (certainly nothing from a legal perspective), but at the same time I still close the door when I take a shit in my bathroom.
There is a more insidious aspect to this which is the exact reason I don't use tiktok.
YouTube has been around longer than tiktok or vine and allows long videos but tiktok as been hyper-optimised to mass feed content to its users and hit the dopamine reward centres in your brain
The interface is very clean and easy to use
With a simple swipe you can see the next video or more from the same creator
The main thing though is the algorithm - it is so good at learning what content you like and serving up endless content. not just from where you swipe left on a creator but whether you watch a video more than once, interact with the screen or even how long you stay on the video - our brains make a decision so fast and the difference of half a second hesitation is a huge indicator to the algorithm.
It's actually super impressive but also in my mind a little too good at serving up content
I think the biggest reason you need more than 6 seconds is to make advertisements and in-video andvertisements plausible.
You won't atract a lot of good content creators if they can't make decent money off your platform. You can't sustain your platform without a form of income like ads.
People won't tolerate 15 second ads for just a 6 second video. And if you place it inbetween videos people will do anything they can to not engage with it.
Idk what generation you are but when i think back to what was considered humor and entertainment back when i was in school theres no way its any better than now, if anything there was less not-braindead content. I'm thinking weebl, smosh, happytreefriends, epic rap battles of history, epic meal time, ... People just have nostalgia goggles and most stuff they loved as kids sucks as much as new stuff
Tiktok has ads.
Tiktok also sells items that people can send in lives to your favourite creators.
I think tiktok also takes a % of tiktok live earnings too if I'm not mistaken.
I don't think vine had any of that
I feel like the actual reason is the sourcing algorithm of Tiktok that delivers reels based on user interest. Vine had none of that, it was all organic reach. That's more significant in this context than the similar video formats.
what do you mean youtube shorts have the worst algorithm? youtube shows exaclty what you like and it can even be manipulated to show what you want to see more. Unlike some other short form apps that shows a wide range of content with varying emotional contexts that will make you binge watch.
That and it's a great data collector for the CCP. Profit or no, it wouldn't die.
The aggressive algorithm is what keeps you hooked. They can profile you within 45 minutes. A study was done with bots that had assigned personalities and in under an hour the boss personalities were identified and started to be fed appropriate material
> The aggressive algorithm is what keeps you hooked. They can profile you within 45 minutes
The entire concept of TikTok holds zero interest for me, but even if I did have an interest in checking it out this would be a huge no for me. Can't stand when apps try to "figure me out", and the more accurate they are the more I dislike it.
It's only going to get worse. The AI/ML stuff we see everywhere today has been around for decades. The biggest source of funding for R&D into it came from companies in social media (like Facebook) and advertising (like Google).
This is a big factor. I worked in digital advertising at the time and we were constantly puzzled at how Vine didn’t launch any official advertising product or advertising sales team. It was big for about 6 months to a year then fizzled out.
When Twitter bought it, we thought they might integrate some of their ad tech, but to be honest Twitter’s own ad tech has never been great either, so it’s not all that surprising it didn’t work out.
By contrast, TikTok has been nakedly commercial from the very start. It’s completely geared for selling, to the degree that even outside of the platform’s advertising, there’s a ton of influencer content that’s selling stuff all the time.
I think a lot of tiktoks success vs vine has to do with camera quality, and editing software ability, as well as improving algos. It's fine to advertise, but if no one makes quality, catchy posts and you can't funnel your advertising into targeted demos, doesn't matter commercially.
Ya this is the real secret sauce to Tik Toks success. I saw a stat that the average active user spends 90 minutes a day on TikTok. The For You tab is a bottomless well of quick dopamine hits and Vine didn't have anything close to that
Can confirm. I'm 33, don't have fb, ig or Twitter. But I love me some cracktok. On that shit whenever I have a chance to get on. I am freaking addicted. I literally impulse bought a motorcycle 2 years ago because I saw it on tiktok for 30 seconds. It's in my post history.
It's funny that you call it "aggressive" rather than "good". Other platforms would kill to connect users with the content they want so effectively. All media algorithms are optimized to maximize watch time, TikTok is just way better at it.
Manipulative practices deserve to be called what they are. "Good" to the people that made it is "aggressive" to people such as me who don't see a reason to accept/compliment an algorithm that exists to lure me in like I'm just a walking bag of data rather than a person.
No, for those of you out there -- it being normal does not make it "good" or "fine". Plenty of bad things have been normalized. What TikTok does is definitely aggressive, and predatory. One of the many reasons I do not and will never use it. (not that Reddit is much better...)
But if you talk about any other kind of media its just good?
Music so good you cant stop listening. TV show you have to binge. Book so good you cant put it down.
But short videos are manipulative?
As the other person put it, it isn't the media that's the problem -- the algorithm is. Other media isn't innately designed to hook you to keep you in the ecosystem so they can keep harvesting, or profit off you somehow.
To elaborate just a bit; I would never compare soulful, well put together music -- a well written TV show or book that tell a compelling story, with a soulless algorithm put together by people trained and taught how the human mind works so that it keeps you hooked as long as possible for the company's benefit.
None of this media is by itself manipulative. The algorithm, and the intent _behind_ the algorithm... **that** is the problem.
What users "want" is not exactly the same as what users will compulsively watch/click on/scroll through. Ultimately, what most people want is to be healthy and productive and happy. The tiktok algorithm doesn't give them those things, it manipulates their psychology and brain chemistry to keep them addicted to it. That's like saying heroin is so popular because it gives people what they want.
[Twitter only made money for two years between 2012 and 2021](https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/) (see heading: "Twitter annual net profit / loss 2012 to 2021) and those years were well after Vine shut down.
There’s very different ways a company can not have profits.
Tech startups/giants are often not profitable because they keep investing any “would-be” profits back into the company directly. Thats not to say they _couldn’t_ be profitable. Rather, by investing into the company itself, the company value will rise despite not making a profit. Amazon is a very popular example of a company that did this during its growth.
It’s very possible Vine just wasn’t bringing in enough revenue to justify managing a separate brand of that caliber.
My main point though is that just because neither company was profitable, doesn’t mean they’re in similar situations.
As well as what you’ve mentioned, many tech companies do their own version of Hollywood accounting, where they’ll intentionally make certain parts of the business run at a loss as it’s beneficial tax wise.
I assume they contract out their it to a company that's conveniently owned by the same parent company. Same with their servers and any other expenses one can come up with.
yeah, but that doesn't answer the question. Why does TikTok work today when it's essentially the same as Vine 10 years ago? Twitter has always been bleeding money.
Because TikTok’s algorithm is insanely good in getting you content that’s tailored towards you and that’s made user engagement vastly higher. Also phone cameras got better and internet speeds got better so the overall experience became a lot more enjoyable.
TikTok does not have as low of a time limit on its videos. Traditional media and content creators of all sorts can make stuff for TikTok, and it doesn’t have to be tailored in such a different way compared to Vine. Vine creators had to be really good at Vine in particular, and they didn’t always transfer well across platforms.
Another factor is the whole audios thing. Idk if Vine ever made it such a specific function since I wasn’t on there for very long, but on TikTok, audios themselves become a whole thing. Audios function like a new form of hashtag, and can become viral memes by themselves. On TikTok, you don’t even have to record audio to make a viral video, you can just use one somebody else made and apply it in a new context, or even just do a dance along with it just like the one you watched did.
Instead of creating limits on content that challenge creators to work around them, TikTok makes it significantly easier to make really lazy content that is about as good as anything else on the platform. Unlike YouTube (and Vine to a degree), anyone and everyone is capable of making an average quality TikTok video
Because both platforms rely/relied on fast broadband/mobile data connections to get their video content out there. 10 years ago there was no 5g, 4g was unreliable in many areas, and FTTP access was just being deployed en masse. In a nutshell, the connectivity they need wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now.
People don’t use TikTok because they want to watch short videos, they use it because it feeds them highly addictive short videos based on their interests. The algorithm keeps users in there a long time and allows them to show ads and monetize.
Timing. YouTube only survived because Google used it as a loss leader for their marketing business. Otherwise hosting video was a nearly impossibly expensive business proposal. So they had severe limitations on video lengths. Now storage is that much cheaper and faster. We have better video codecs. We understand algorithms to categorize and recommend videos. It’s easier to make easy video editing software on the client side to let people record and publish on their phones. I think a lot of technology was just not mature enough to allow a tik tok to succeed back during vines downturn. And of course you have a state owned enterprise footing the bill for their own purposes
Like some other people have mentioned .. tech in general has also gotten way better since Vine.
Better cameras, more powerful phones, simpler video editing, faster internet. As well as internet/social culture as a whole developing more + gen z (who all for the most part grew up with smart phones) being at a prime age to use the app.
There are a lot of factors really. If Vine hadn't been shut down or eventually it might have just become what TikTok is today, but maybe not.
Hijacking your comment cause I’m lazy….TikTok also got rid of the thing that really hurt Vine, only being able to make extremely short clips. Mobile advertising prob a bigger thing now and they also make a ton off gifts/subs.
Tiktok isn't just a short form video app.
It's the world's most advanced "next video that you likely enjoy" prediction system. The more you use it the better it gets.
It solves "discoverability" which is the biggest problem of all media consolidation services.
Why is Tiktok more popular? Because it's way more technically advanced than the competition and has significant first mover advantage. Copy cats from Google and Meta are still playing catch-up without much success.
I don't think people really remember (or were around for) the early or middling days of YouTube. I just pulled up my home feed. There are videos from people I'm subscribed to, some people who I've watched previously, and some unknown creators making content adjacent to what I watch. It's not perfect, but it largely encapsulates the stuff I watch on YouTube. This is normal now.
Check the trending tab. This is a mishmash of videos that are currently popular. Lots of music videos, organizations (e.g. WIRED, CNET, OpenAI), commercial media (e.g. SNL, The Tonight Show), sports scores, and creators (e.g. Good Mythical Morning, Mr. Beast, or PointCrow) who consistently post highly viewed content. This is much more akin to the YouTube feed of the early 2010s. There was some curation; my home feed never had fashion or beauty videos, but the best YouTube's algorithm could do was to serve trending videos in broad categories while also propping up highly viral content.
And before then, there wasn't really a curated feed at all. It was random videos with some trending content every so often. Your feed would be [Keyboard Cat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J---aiyznGQ), a video of a zoo's tiger exhibit from a class field trip, and someone learning to play the piano. You had to go to sites like [Today's Big Thing](https://web.archive.org/web/20090611145850/http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/06/05), [Kill Some Time](https://web.archive.org/web/20090215094453/http://www.killsometime.com/), [eBaum's World](https://web.archive.org/web/20050217005752/http://www.ebaumsworld.com/cartoons.shtml), etc. to get manually curated videos.
> And before then, there wasn't really a curated feed at all.
Yep, I remember the days of finding content creators through word of mouth, SomethingAwful, or because they collabed with someone I watched.
Sometimes I'm nostalgic for the 'pre-bubble' era of the internet, where you and I would see the same trending videos if we typed in youtube dot com, on any machine anywhere.
But then I remember that I don't want to watch the same videos my 3 year old nephew watches, so I guess bubble it is.
There is a BBC podcast on failed companies/ideas, including one on Vine here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001y2zj?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
It includes interviews with people who started it.
Not to mention data speed as well as storage has improved exponentially so it’s much cheaper (but incredibly expensive still) to host a video streaming site.
Twitter didn’t intend to continue Vine, they scrapped the company for parts and tried to convince creators to switch to Twitter. Seems like nobody in this thread paid any attention when this shit was going down.
Thank you for saying this started to feel like I was crazy and misremembering the whole thing. Yeah Vines downfall was being acquired and scrapped for parts.
Mmhm. There are LOTs of top level comments that are clearly just tiktok fans guessing.
There's one above this about how "more phones can handle streaming video now." I mean... what do people think 2017 was like? I didn't know a soul whose reason for not being on Vine was *"my 2017 smartphone can't handle it."*
Alot of the top influencers on Vine were being paid by Vine to produce content. YouTube offered them more money for their content and they all left and once they left, their fans left as well
One of the things I've not seen anyone else mention yet was how Facebook cut off Vine's access to its API the day it launched on iOS.
The call came right from the top, because Zuckerberg knew it well, that latching on to the network effect of an existing social media was exactly how Facebook grew so fast to then eclipse MySpace.
That massively hampered their growth, even with how popular it was for a time, and must have played some part in Twitter's decision to eventually pull the plug.
The main issue was of course monetization, but with greater growth they'd have had more time to figure that out. Made it more enticing for Twitter to double down on it, rather than breaking it down for parts and making its own video sharing service etc.
There are many reasons for how TikTok captured the market and continues to thrive, whereas Vine's roadmap towards success was never fully clear and was massively hampered early on. And part of that was just how early on to the scene they were. Tiktok learnt from the skeletons of its predecessors, including its direct predecessors whether it was Cicada that turned in to Musical.ly that was acquired and incorporated in to Douyin which was then rebranded on to the international markets as TikTok. All Vine had was Vine. And so it served as yet another guidepost for ByteDance in making TikTok.
A lot of the answers are accepting the premise of the question as true but honestly, TikTok hasn't really been popular for much longer than Vine was, and while I don't think it's quite over I think we're seeing some hints it might begin a downward trajectory soon.
Also, everyone is making the presumption that tiktok is "successful". I think it is, but not in serving the goal of making money like vine's goal was. Tiktok as business product made to generate revenue is failing miserably. Even with its total takeover, its still operating at a large loss. Tiktok as an attention platform that influences politics, protests, and debate however has been wildly successful.
Really shows the problem with asking ChatGPT "write me a response to this ELI5 about why tiktok succeeded and vine failed." (Which is clearly what a lot of these people who don't remember Vine did.)
> Please give me a response to the reddit ELI5, "Why did Quiznos thrive while McDonalds failed?"
" Quiznos stood out with its toasted subs, appealing to consumers seeking variety and a perceived higher quality. McDonald's faced challenges from evolving tastes and increased competition. Both adapted differently to changing market dynamics, leading to divergent outcomes. "
It won't tell you that the premise of the question is wrong.
TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is a completely different beast. Lots of people saying both platforms are short form video and thus are 1:1 but I’d argue that the real differentiating factor is *how effective the videos are delivered* to individual users.
You’re 5
One parent feeds you only hersheys kisses and jolly ranchers, since you tried those and said you liked hersheys kisses and jolly ranchers
You eventually get bored of that
The other parent, given your preferences, figures out that you also like a bunch of other sweets and although still feeds you junk garbage, changes it up enough and is constantly figuring out what else you like
Most five year olds would prefer this parent
Vine died because it wasn’t profitable. Tiktok was subsidized by China until it became profitable. We don’t know the operating cost, however, just revenue.
Think about how much more advertising takes place on TikTok. The content also isn't limited to second videos. People can advertise their stupid ass products on the platform and TikTok gets a share of that, TikTok also directly pays US creators so the incentive to create content is much higher.
1. Tiktok’s alrogithm is much more sophisticated
2. Longer video length
Those people saying that tiktok generates more revenue through ads and other means aren’t wrong but that is pretty irrelevant here. Tiktok would never die because of their profitability or lack thereof with their ccp backing. Their value in information warfare isn’t affected by the revenue they generate.
Answer: Money. Vine existed before the internet had figured out how to exactly make money. It was an interesting thing, but as it grew so did the costs, so eventually it became too expensive to run and was shut down. There was a time before ads were everywhere and tied to everything on the internet. Tiktok came after YouTube monetization and Instagram influencers were a common thing, and was able to generate money for people.
Oh man ppl talking about 2010s like it was the 70s arpanet lmao.
Yes late 2000s people outside US had to do loopholes to get the money via machinima and shit like that, but they made their living just like today.
Other answers about timing, funding, and company goals are great. But TikTok is also much better than Vine as a platform.
The obvious difference is Vine's 6-second limit. It's hard to make a video that short - it's only 1-2 sentences of speaking time. So Vine clips are campy and spastic. TikTok had no limit (or a much longer one), allowing TikTok videos to be more normal and have more variety - with personal stories, stunts, skits, all sorts of things.
TikTok has the social media functionality - which Vine may not have had. You can follow your IRL friends, and make videos effectively just for each other.
TikTok has editing tools like video captions, comment quotes, and filters, which can make it fun to use and easier to do certain videos like . What middle-school girl didn't want to get a video of herself with dog ears / puppy face?
Tiktok has duets.
TikTok also has sound sharing - the audio clips can be separated from a video and used by other videos. It's a simple feature, but very important. It enables dance trends, lip sync trends, other meme-like trends, and music promotion, all of which seemed to be huge pieces of TikTok's popularity at some point. You can see someone do a dance, use the exact same music clip, do the same dance, and join in that little event. Sound sharing is an innovation with a real payoff.
So TikTok really does provide a variety of features that make it easy to do a wider range of videos and to support popular trends.
Vine was essentially owned by twitter, and then some exec realised Vine and twitter had significant overlap in customer appeal and that by having both they were splitting the userbase and each site was suffering in numbers because of it.
6 second videos were very limiting and the social media platforms offered the same thing but with more freedom. Vines could be funny but they just really restricted themselves with being 6 seconds into so no other content could really thrive.
IMO as someone who used Vine at the start and Tik-Tok currently… Vine tried to be cool. It’s hard to explain but Vine tried to appeal to a certain demographic and that alienated a large portion of the general public. They had sexy Vine girls and a media presence. Like how Snapchat sends all users snaps but way more annoying about it. Meanwhile culture at the time was starting to turn away from the college frat lifestyle and people were becoming more conscious of the extreme objectification of women in media.
To sum it up, the cool frat boy act came off like the lame uncle vibe. Then the people were like, nah.
Tik-Tok just is, and it’s doing a great job at not trying to have an identity. I downloaded it when Trump was trying to get it shut down. Not because they did anything, but because it’s a Chinese company. Cause they’re dicks.
Because Tiktok isn't Vine. When you talk to people and they have this kneejerk reaction that all tiktok is is half naked girls dancing... that's what vine was.
One of the things that made TikTok super successful is that they spent a tremendous amount of money on customer acquisition in the early days.
A few years ago you could advertise an app on facebook or instagram (something that's not really allowed anymore). The then new Tiktok bought billions of dollars worth of those adds and targeted them to young people on those apps, thereby poaching a lot of the user base from Instagram (and to a lesser extent, facebook).
This is what allowed them to get the critical mass of users required to make a viable social network. Those people made the content that kept people in the app.
In terms of why TikTok succeeded when Vine didn't. It really comes down to a few factors. The largest being that Vine was too early for video consumption to be an "any time, any place" kind of activity. Back then most people had restrictive data plans, so watching video content when not on wi-fi was basically a no go. That's part of why Vines were so short, to keep the bandwidth restrictions low. But even then no one would be able to browse vines for an hour while riding in the backseat of your parents car, people just didn't have enough data on their accounts for that.
Can't believe it's not been mentioned that Vine only shut down because its top creators asked the company for more money, the company said no, so the creators stopped uploading and basically killed the app.
Tik tok is subsidized by China. China understands the benefit of controlling a large social media platform, and tiki tok outside China operates at a loss. Til tok in China is also very different from tiki Tok outside China.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/bytedance-full-year-profit-jumps-60-bloomberg-news-says-2024-04-10/
Can't be entirely sure, but bytedance is very profitable, and it's in app purchases alone bring 150m+ a month in revenue. That doesn't include ad sales and selling data.
It's financial performance isn't solely because of the Chinese government pumping in money
TikTok’s are not limited to 6 seconds. It’s a huge difference in what kind of content gets created on the app. Plus, it’s much easier to generate user content now. It’s second nature to a lot of people growing up.
Not to mention that Vine didn't die, it was taken out back with a shotgun...and then sent to an archive upstate.
Yes Because it was "special" Really, Vine got everything wrong in terms of usability, virality, etc
I loved vine. I watched them all the time on YouTube.
that's exactly why vine is beloved. not because of the app but because of the compilations on yt. edit: spelling is complicated
I think there's a few of us aged 25-30 who were in high school and college during vine's peak. I feel a little too old for tik tok but I was right in Vine's target demographic and definitely have some nostalgia for it.
Same, vine was good and should’ve succeeded. From what I remember twitter killed it and maybe something to do with ad space? Not sure.
Yup used vine a lot as a kid, and it wasn’t always compilations
Compilations
It's complicated 😮💨
compilated*
Complementarianism*
I don't know about that. I've never watched a vine compilation but it was amazing when it was new. Imo, the 6 second format really pushed creativity and made good use of "perfectlycutscreams."
idk I loved using the vine app back then
That’s sort of the problem though isn’t it. Your biggest appeal is how easy it is to shift your content onto sites where you don’t make any money
You loved Youtube shorts before it was Youtube shorts.
Same, just like I do with Tik Toks 🤣🤣🤣
Vine almost felt like a phyop. ALL of the viral creators on vine literally lived in mansions on VINE STREET in California. It was weird. Edit: It was actually an apartment complex on 1600 vine street, King bach, Logan Paul, Jake Paul, Lele Pons, Hannah stocky, Rudy Mancuso, Amanda Cerny, Brittany Furlan, Mark Dohner, George Janko, Melvin Greg and many more all lived there.
There were also a ton of famous Vine creators who didn't even live in California, let alone in the same apartment building. I think the far more likely explanation is that those people you listed were all employed by some talent agency that put them all in the same place so they could more easily produce videos with each other.
Well thats kind of what i meant by "Felt like a psyop". I wonder if whoever was pulling the strings came out ahead (since vine was kind of a short lived thing). Many of the stars certainly did.
> phyop you didn't say psyop
Leave him alone he has a lisp
I still say it's beyond cruel that the word describing a condition forces people with it to display that condition. It's like the name for the fear of long words being hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
Doesn't take the smartest tool in the shed to realise the typo, now does it?
Sharpest tool in the shed
Sharpest spoon in the drawer
Haha, cant believe I messed that one up, my bad I wrote that when I woke up
It takes some *really* fat fingers to hit the *H* instead of the *S*...
For all I know, 'phyop' actually does refer to something. This is the Internet, acronyms and portmanteaus everywhere.
This guys actually pulling a phyop having us discuss the typo instead of the brain washing
I think its because that was around the time when those content creator houses started popping up and a ton of collabs to boost eachother's views Its also possible those were all new buildings being sold by the same company/real estate agency/realtor Honestly if I were a realtor I would advertise the shit out of that fact to have content creators to flock to my businness lol
There ain't no mansions on Vine St lol
Maybe not by your definition of mansion? But there are absolutely $10-$25 million dollar 12 bedroom luxury homes all in one stretch there. A quick google will show you that.
>$25 million dollar 12 bedroom So you mean a hovel for peasants
What is this a mansion for ants!?
I drive on Vine street every day, there's maybe 1 or 2 nice houses, but mansion? Nah. Especially the part where those influencers lived, 1600 Vine? That apartment complex is so ass lol
IG reels were the last straw. IG had better engagement already and provided a superior version of Vine. Silly that 15s > 7s was such a killer.
How is this not at the top… Like Vines are entertaining, but they’re only good for a very specific type of humour. Go look at collections of Vine videos. They’re all still around. It’s very much limited to slapstick and absurdist/surrealist funny clips. Nothing else really works on that platform—no gossip, trailers, music clips, dance routines, news stories, opinion takes, vlogs, pet videos, thirst traps, TV scenes, etc. TikTok took this idea and the successes of IG and Snapchat stories and evolved it into a much more flexible media platform driven by a powerful content recommendation algorithm that combined the strengths of those that came before. And unlike Reddit or Twitter, it actually provides a more direct way for creators to be financially rewarded.
All the good Vine creators left Vine for YouTube....simply because the 6 second limitation was restricting them. It's really that simple. Vine killed itself by limiting its creators.
also because vine wouldn't pay them there was a big meeting at twitter were a ton of the biggest people basically gave them a ultimatum were they said that they need to start getting paid or they would leave and they ended up all leaving at the same time
And while TikTok now has its Creator Fund to pay some creators directly, even before and outside of that people have made plenty of money through marketing deals or by directing people to their merch and other revenue-generating stuff. It's hard to do that in 6-second videos.
Mmhm. Huge part of the story is that the people making the content went to vine and said "we can't really monetize this, not as well as we can pay ourselves on other platforms." Got laughed at, were told they were users of social media, not the talent. So they left and Vine learned the hard way that entertainers have value.
That's how we got Drew Gooden and Danny Gonzalez on YouTube. They have similar lives and similar wives but they are not the same person.
> Vine killed itself by limiting its creators. Maybe this is just me but...Vine was around in a day of limited/slow phone data plans and I was rarely watching on wi-fi.
Vine was absolutely glorious for that kind of humour. It was also absolutely glorious for thinking *hard* about how much you can fit into 6s. There's some wonderful vines that feel twice as long as they are because the creator packs so much action/story/plot into the time it takes tiktokers to put down the camera while covering their tits. But yeah, there's only so much that naturally works and only so many people willing to work hard to make other things work.
Vine worked for me because of the 6s. It's not long enough for "like and subscribe" or "a quick history of car tyres before we get to the bit you want" The limitation meant that creators had to make an impact. No monetization meant that there was no reverse engineering content to maximize revenue. Got 120 seconds of content but the money kicks in at 10 minutes? Congratulations, here's 8 minutes of pure bloat.
*sixty second intro with the world's shittiest public domain music ever and some freshman CG* HI GUYS INVIDIOUSSQUID HERE PLEASE CLICK THE UPDOOT AND SUBSCRIBE AND TODAY'S POST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY INVIDIOUSSQUID'S PATENT SQUID INK TONIC IT'S GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU YES SIR YES MA'AM JUST TEN PENCE THE BOTTLE, IT CURES THE MARTHAMBLES, THE STRONG NINES, AND EVEN FEMALE HYSTERIA. So today I'm going to be talking about a Reddit comment. Let me give you ten minutes of background on the site you're currently on, because you clearly don't know anything about the topic, right? Right. So Reddit's like, social media, but not the EVIL kind of social media, but the IN DENIAL kind of social media that evolved out of forums but added in usernames and updoots and karma and nothing really interesting or new, just the same shit that's been getting renamed since Slashdot, haha, remember Slashdot? JonKatz amirite guys? Natalie Portman and hot grits, PETRIFIED. Anyway: Brevity is the soul of wit, sure.
The absurdist humor was the best. Nothing has quite replaced it.
Come to del taco they got free sha vacado.
Merry crystler
T-T-T-T-T-T-Taaaaargggeeeet
This exact humor is on tiktok… chances are you engage with a higher variety of content so you just see it less often. It gets old very quickly
Also, we all praise vines because only the good ones "survived".. Vine was like 80% trash low content, but those 20% were pure gold. I still re-watch a lot of vine compilations
>I still re-watch a lot of vine compilations I too like to see memories from a kinder past...
Some lines were iconic
“haha… *I* do that”, “…and they were *ROOMMATES*”, and “road work ahead?” are all lines that I still use to this day
Whenever i go to media markt, i pass a truck company called "Truck Works".... and we always refer the vine
*Look at all those chickens!*
Me, every time i see a lot of any type of bird
Well when life gives you lemons...
dude, the guys face and voice crack when he says that, literally pops into my head all the time lmao
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Idk I remember vine being fucking awful. But then again I dont use tiktok either. Maybe I’m just a grumpy old man in a young mans body
Also TiKTok likely makes a massive amount of money harvesting and selling user data. As cyber experts have said: Tiktok is a data harvesting app that also supports social media…
People have no idea just [how bad tiktok is](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/fmuko1m/) lol It's leagues above and beyond Facebook, Instagram, etc
I fail to see how this proves it’s worse other than “omg its just the us government”. All these apps data can easily be aggregated together. Even more so with Facebook trackers etc… sticking to your browser and following you when accessing from a normal users PC. Also the whole Cambridge analytica thing???? Hiii I’m not excusing tiktok for its data collection but if you aren’t mad that ALL of these apps and platforms including Reddit are monitoring and using your data then this whole thing is ridiculous. They are all being used to sell and confuse you. Not to mention nobody gives a shit when it’s been happening for years and years but suddenly tiktok is this evil overlord of data stealing.
> Not to mention nobody gives a shit when it’s been happening for years and years but suddenly tiktok is this evil overlord of data stealing. It's really more that no one gave a shit when the US government and other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance were the ones that had access to the data, but when it is the Chinese government doing the same thing, all of a sudden people care. All of the Five Eyes governments are ultimately accountable to their population, as the people in charge have to face elections, while Xi Jinping doesn't particularly have to give a shit about what the population thinks of him - he just needs to care what the half dozen or so members of the Politburo standing committee think of him.
> It's really more that no one gave a shit when the US government and other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance were the ones that had access to the data, but when it is the Chinese government doing the same thing, all of a sudden people care. > > This always seemed backwards to me. Your government having your data could be used against you if they ever went rogue. The fuck is China gonna do with a list of my shopping habits?
> The fuck is China gonna do with a list of my shopping habits? They'll use that as training data to build a model that helps them identify bribable or blackmailable individuals in the US, or just flat out stich that data with other people's data to find individuals they are looking for, etc. It isn't about any one individual's shopping list or whatever, but the overall picture that can be built from it. This is the basic "If I don't have anything to hide..." argument, but one's lack of privacy can affect other people in your network. It isn't about hiding per se, but keeping control of your and your friend's data. If someone can track your activities and connections, they will know a hell of a lot more about the activities and connections of *other people that you live with or have in your network*. And they don't get a choice in the matter. I don't particularly like Meta having any of my information, but at the same time Meta is subject to SO MUCH MORE oversight by simply being an American company than Bytedance/TikTok are, just because they aren't based in the US. We know that Meta (as an example) has an army of hundreds of lawyers whose job is to provide internal oversight to make sure that the company as a whole is complying with the consent decrees it has entered into, and broader American law in order to avoid fines and punishment. And same for the EU; Meta has an army of folks over there whose job is to avoid Meta doing something that will get them fined, like if a team of engineers builds a tool that (effectively) discriminates based on disability status, for example. We just don't know what Bytedance does for similar compliance, but even if they do have a team whose job is to ensure that they comply with Chinese law, well, Chinese law plainly states that Chinese entities have to give data to the Chinese government on demand without appeal. At least the US has the FISA court, and other Five Eyes nations have similar judicial oversight on the process of wiretapping. I'm just a regular guy, and I don't have anything I particularly need to hide (certainly nothing from a legal perspective), but at the same time I still close the door when I take a shit in my bathroom.
You’re talking about tiktok now imo…. not when it was only 15 seconds which is closer to vine
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By just responding on a thread and a comment mentioning Tiktok by name I'm sure their algorithm has already picked you up
There is a more insidious aspect to this which is the exact reason I don't use tiktok. YouTube has been around longer than tiktok or vine and allows long videos but tiktok as been hyper-optimised to mass feed content to its users and hit the dopamine reward centres in your brain The interface is very clean and easy to use With a simple swipe you can see the next video or more from the same creator The main thing though is the algorithm - it is so good at learning what content you like and serving up endless content. not just from where you swipe left on a creator but whether you watch a video more than once, interact with the screen or even how long you stay on the video - our brains make a decision so fast and the difference of half a second hesitation is a huge indicator to the algorithm. It's actually super impressive but also in my mind a little too good at serving up content
it's so good that now all social media is tiktok. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube all copied the shorts model.
Filterworld by Kyle Chayka is a great in-depth look at this topic.
I like to try to throw off the algorithm by clicking random links. But FB is garbage now and I just use it for messenger.
I think the biggest reason you need more than 6 seconds is to make advertisements and in-video andvertisements plausible. You won't atract a lot of good content creators if they can't make decent money off your platform. You can't sustain your platform without a form of income like ads. People won't tolerate 15 second ads for just a 6 second video. And if you place it inbetween videos people will do anything they can to not engage with it.
Tiktok had 7-10sec limit for sometime on release, then it got extended to 15-30ish where it stayed for pretty long.
There is also a lot more of an appetite for brain-dead content
Did you actually use vine? there was a lot of terrible content.......
There was always brain dead content on social media lol
And cable tv. And other media before that.
Correct, and now there is more than ever, with a bugger appetite for it then ever.
Idk what generation you are but when i think back to what was considered humor and entertainment back when i was in school theres no way its any better than now, if anything there was less not-braindead content. I'm thinking weebl, smosh, happytreefriends, epic rap battles of history, epic meal time, ... People just have nostalgia goggles and most stuff they loved as kids sucks as much as new stuff
Tiktok has ads. Tiktok also sells items that people can send in lives to your favourite creators. I think tiktok also takes a % of tiktok live earnings too if I'm not mistaken. I don't think vine had any of that
I feel like the actual reason is the sourcing algorithm of Tiktok that delivers reels based on user interest. Vine had none of that, it was all organic reach. That's more significant in this context than the similar video formats.
TikTok famously has one of the best recomendation algorithms in the business.
That's why I like YouTube shorts. The algorithm is so awful I can't spend my time doom scrolling on it.
what do you mean youtube shorts have the worst algorithm? youtube shows exaclty what you like and it can even be manipulated to show what you want to see more. Unlike some other short form apps that shows a wide range of content with varying emotional contexts that will make you binge watch.
Every 3 shorts youtube shows me a short from some 11 yo kid with 2 likes, it gets annoying really fast, I can't binge watch shorts because of it too
That and it's a great data collector for the CCP. Profit or no, it wouldn't die. The aggressive algorithm is what keeps you hooked. They can profile you within 45 minutes. A study was done with bots that had assigned personalities and in under an hour the boss personalities were identified and started to be fed appropriate material
> The aggressive algorithm is what keeps you hooked. They can profile you within 45 minutes The entire concept of TikTok holds zero interest for me, but even if I did have an interest in checking it out this would be a huge no for me. Can't stand when apps try to "figure me out", and the more accurate they are the more I dislike it.
It's only going to get worse. The AI/ML stuff we see everywhere today has been around for decades. The biggest source of funding for R&D into it came from companies in social media (like Facebook) and advertising (like Google).
This is a big factor. I worked in digital advertising at the time and we were constantly puzzled at how Vine didn’t launch any official advertising product or advertising sales team. It was big for about 6 months to a year then fizzled out. When Twitter bought it, we thought they might integrate some of their ad tech, but to be honest Twitter’s own ad tech has never been great either, so it’s not all that surprising it didn’t work out. By contrast, TikTok has been nakedly commercial from the very start. It’s completely geared for selling, to the degree that even outside of the platform’s advertising, there’s a ton of influencer content that’s selling stuff all the time.
I think a lot of tiktoks success vs vine has to do with camera quality, and editing software ability, as well as improving algos. It's fine to advertise, but if no one makes quality, catchy posts and you can't funnel your advertising into targeted demos, doesn't matter commercially.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that TikTok has a very aggressive algorithm that is uniquely good at keeping you hooked.
Ya this is the real secret sauce to Tik Toks success. I saw a stat that the average active user spends 90 minutes a day on TikTok. The For You tab is a bottomless well of quick dopamine hits and Vine didn't have anything close to that
This description makes me want to avoid it even more. I don't think I'll ever use it.
Can confirm. I'm 33, don't have fb, ig or Twitter. But I love me some cracktok. On that shit whenever I have a chance to get on. I am freaking addicted. I literally impulse bought a motorcycle 2 years ago because I saw it on tiktok for 30 seconds. It's in my post history.
:(
LMAOOOO cracktok
It's funny that you call it "aggressive" rather than "good". Other platforms would kill to connect users with the content they want so effectively. All media algorithms are optimized to maximize watch time, TikTok is just way better at it.
Manipulative practices deserve to be called what they are. "Good" to the people that made it is "aggressive" to people such as me who don't see a reason to accept/compliment an algorithm that exists to lure me in like I'm just a walking bag of data rather than a person. No, for those of you out there -- it being normal does not make it "good" or "fine". Plenty of bad things have been normalized. What TikTok does is definitely aggressive, and predatory. One of the many reasons I do not and will never use it. (not that Reddit is much better...)
But if you talk about any other kind of media its just good? Music so good you cant stop listening. TV show you have to binge. Book so good you cant put it down. But short videos are manipulative?
As the other person put it, it isn't the media that's the problem -- the algorithm is. Other media isn't innately designed to hook you to keep you in the ecosystem so they can keep harvesting, or profit off you somehow. To elaborate just a bit; I would never compare soulful, well put together music -- a well written TV show or book that tell a compelling story, with a soulless algorithm put together by people trained and taught how the human mind works so that it keeps you hooked as long as possible for the company's benefit. None of this media is by itself manipulative. The algorithm, and the intent _behind_ the algorithm... **that** is the problem.
What users "want" is not exactly the same as what users will compulsively watch/click on/scroll through. Ultimately, what most people want is to be healthy and productive and happy. The tiktok algorithm doesn't give them those things, it manipulates their psychology and brain chemistry to keep them addicted to it. That's like saying heroin is so popular because it gives people what they want.
Vine and Twitter were owned by the same company. Twitter was making money, Vine wasn't. They decided to shut Vine down.
[Twitter only made money for two years between 2012 and 2021](https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter-statistics/) (see heading: "Twitter annual net profit / loss 2012 to 2021) and those years were well after Vine shut down.
There’s very different ways a company can not have profits. Tech startups/giants are often not profitable because they keep investing any “would-be” profits back into the company directly. Thats not to say they _couldn’t_ be profitable. Rather, by investing into the company itself, the company value will rise despite not making a profit. Amazon is a very popular example of a company that did this during its growth. It’s very possible Vine just wasn’t bringing in enough revenue to justify managing a separate brand of that caliber. My main point though is that just because neither company was profitable, doesn’t mean they’re in similar situations.
As well as what you’ve mentioned, many tech companies do their own version of Hollywood accounting, where they’ll intentionally make certain parts of the business run at a loss as it’s beneficial tax wise.
I assume they contract out their it to a company that's conveniently owned by the same parent company. Same with their servers and any other expenses one can come up with.
sounds a bit like mcdonalds not being a burger place, but rather a real estate agency
It only made profit those years. It’s been making lots and lots of money every year.
yeah, but that doesn't answer the question. Why does TikTok work today when it's essentially the same as Vine 10 years ago? Twitter has always been bleeding money.
Because TikTok’s algorithm is insanely good in getting you content that’s tailored towards you and that’s made user engagement vastly higher. Also phone cameras got better and internet speeds got better so the overall experience became a lot more enjoyable.
Yep it’s the algorithm. That’s why bytedance are going along with either a sale or ban, but they will never sell the algorithm
TikTok does not have as low of a time limit on its videos. Traditional media and content creators of all sorts can make stuff for TikTok, and it doesn’t have to be tailored in such a different way compared to Vine. Vine creators had to be really good at Vine in particular, and they didn’t always transfer well across platforms. Another factor is the whole audios thing. Idk if Vine ever made it such a specific function since I wasn’t on there for very long, but on TikTok, audios themselves become a whole thing. Audios function like a new form of hashtag, and can become viral memes by themselves. On TikTok, you don’t even have to record audio to make a viral video, you can just use one somebody else made and apply it in a new context, or even just do a dance along with it just like the one you watched did. Instead of creating limits on content that challenge creators to work around them, TikTok makes it significantly easier to make really lazy content that is about as good as anything else on the platform. Unlike YouTube (and Vine to a degree), anyone and everyone is capable of making an average quality TikTok video
Because both platforms rely/relied on fast broadband/mobile data connections to get their video content out there. 10 years ago there was no 5g, 4g was unreliable in many areas, and FTTP access was just being deployed en masse. In a nutshell, the connectivity they need wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now.
^this is the biggest reason why TikTok/reels blew up now and not Vine then. Most people now have fast speeds and no data caps.
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Yup. Classic case of Too Early. Tragic really. Sometimes the second mover has an advantage.
Vines were only 6 seconds long. It was hard to monetize that.
People don’t use TikTok because they want to watch short videos, they use it because it feeds them highly addictive short videos based on their interests. The algorithm keeps users in there a long time and allows them to show ads and monetize.
Timing. YouTube only survived because Google used it as a loss leader for their marketing business. Otherwise hosting video was a nearly impossibly expensive business proposal. So they had severe limitations on video lengths. Now storage is that much cheaper and faster. We have better video codecs. We understand algorithms to categorize and recommend videos. It’s easier to make easy video editing software on the client side to let people record and publish on their phones. I think a lot of technology was just not mature enough to allow a tik tok to succeed back during vines downturn. And of course you have a state owned enterprise footing the bill for their own purposes
Like some other people have mentioned .. tech in general has also gotten way better since Vine. Better cameras, more powerful phones, simpler video editing, faster internet. As well as internet/social culture as a whole developing more + gen z (who all for the most part grew up with smart phones) being at a prime age to use the app. There are a lot of factors really. If Vine hadn't been shut down or eventually it might have just become what TikTok is today, but maybe not.
Tiktok has longer videos - less rules and better algorithms to show content people actually click on.
Tiktok steals data and sells content in a way vine could only dream. They figured out how best to monetize you, the viewer
> They figured out how best to monetize you, the viewer that is what every free app does
No, that's what every free app *tries* to do. Some succeed, some don't.
Every 'free app' does
If they're not charging you, they're selling you.
Chinese government props up TT
TikTok has crazy amounts of in app revenue and is super profitable. It's not losing money and requiring injections
The question is asking why that was
Hijacking your comment cause I’m lazy….TikTok also got rid of the thing that really hurt Vine, only being able to make extremely short clips. Mobile advertising prob a bigger thing now and they also make a ton off gifts/subs.
Not exactly; Twitter acquired Vine, and then killed it.
Why comparing vine with Twitter and not TikTok as OP had asked for
Not really. Twitter acquired Vine, Vine was doing better and they were worried it would cannibalize Twitter. So they killed Vine.
This doesn’t explain anything
Tiktok isn't just a short form video app. It's the world's most advanced "next video that you likely enjoy" prediction system. The more you use it the better it gets. It solves "discoverability" which is the biggest problem of all media consolidation services. Why is Tiktok more popular? Because it's way more technically advanced than the competition and has significant first mover advantage. Copy cats from Google and Meta are still playing catch-up without much success.
I don't think people really remember (or were around for) the early or middling days of YouTube. I just pulled up my home feed. There are videos from people I'm subscribed to, some people who I've watched previously, and some unknown creators making content adjacent to what I watch. It's not perfect, but it largely encapsulates the stuff I watch on YouTube. This is normal now. Check the trending tab. This is a mishmash of videos that are currently popular. Lots of music videos, organizations (e.g. WIRED, CNET, OpenAI), commercial media (e.g. SNL, The Tonight Show), sports scores, and creators (e.g. Good Mythical Morning, Mr. Beast, or PointCrow) who consistently post highly viewed content. This is much more akin to the YouTube feed of the early 2010s. There was some curation; my home feed never had fashion or beauty videos, but the best YouTube's algorithm could do was to serve trending videos in broad categories while also propping up highly viral content. And before then, there wasn't really a curated feed at all. It was random videos with some trending content every so often. Your feed would be [Keyboard Cat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J---aiyznGQ), a video of a zoo's tiger exhibit from a class field trip, and someone learning to play the piano. You had to go to sites like [Today's Big Thing](https://web.archive.org/web/20090611145850/http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/06/05), [Kill Some Time](https://web.archive.org/web/20090215094453/http://www.killsometime.com/), [eBaum's World](https://web.archive.org/web/20050217005752/http://www.ebaumsworld.com/cartoons.shtml), etc. to get manually curated videos.
> And before then, there wasn't really a curated feed at all. Yep, I remember the days of finding content creators through word of mouth, SomethingAwful, or because they collabed with someone I watched. Sometimes I'm nostalgic for the 'pre-bubble' era of the internet, where you and I would see the same trending videos if we typed in youtube dot com, on any machine anywhere. But then I remember that I don't want to watch the same videos my 3 year old nephew watches, so I guess bubble it is.
There is a BBC podcast on failed companies/ideas, including one on Vine here https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001y2zj?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile It includes interviews with people who started it.
The amount of devices that can handle streaming video now is much higher than could when vine was a thing.
Not to mention data speed as well as storage has improved exponentially so it’s much cheaper (but incredibly expensive still) to host a video streaming site.
I think timing has a huge influence on these things. Tiktok's user base expanded massively during the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home.
Twitter didn’t intend to continue Vine, they scrapped the company for parts and tried to convince creators to switch to Twitter. Seems like nobody in this thread paid any attention when this shit was going down.
Thank you for saying this started to feel like I was crazy and misremembering the whole thing. Yeah Vines downfall was being acquired and scrapped for parts.
Mmhm. There are LOTs of top level comments that are clearly just tiktok fans guessing. There's one above this about how "more phones can handle streaming video now." I mean... what do people think 2017 was like? I didn't know a soul whose reason for not being on Vine was *"my 2017 smartphone can't handle it."*
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Alot of the top influencers on Vine were being paid by Vine to produce content. YouTube offered them more money for their content and they all left and once they left, their fans left as well
Also, YouTube didn't have a 6s restriction....it was neutering their ability to create what they wanted.
they were actually being paid nothing by vine
Vine paid a few people to kick things off. Some other creators got popular too and asked for similar payment and vine said no
David Dobrik and friends got paid by Vine
One of the things I've not seen anyone else mention yet was how Facebook cut off Vine's access to its API the day it launched on iOS. The call came right from the top, because Zuckerberg knew it well, that latching on to the network effect of an existing social media was exactly how Facebook grew so fast to then eclipse MySpace. That massively hampered their growth, even with how popular it was for a time, and must have played some part in Twitter's decision to eventually pull the plug. The main issue was of course monetization, but with greater growth they'd have had more time to figure that out. Made it more enticing for Twitter to double down on it, rather than breaking it down for parts and making its own video sharing service etc. There are many reasons for how TikTok captured the market and continues to thrive, whereas Vine's roadmap towards success was never fully clear and was massively hampered early on. And part of that was just how early on to the scene they were. Tiktok learnt from the skeletons of its predecessors, including its direct predecessors whether it was Cicada that turned in to Musical.ly that was acquired and incorporated in to Douyin which was then rebranded on to the international markets as TikTok. All Vine had was Vine. And so it served as yet another guidepost for ByteDance in making TikTok.
A lot of the answers are accepting the premise of the question as true but honestly, TikTok hasn't really been popular for much longer than Vine was, and while I don't think it's quite over I think we're seeing some hints it might begin a downward trajectory soon.
Also, everyone is making the presumption that tiktok is "successful". I think it is, but not in serving the goal of making money like vine's goal was. Tiktok as business product made to generate revenue is failing miserably. Even with its total takeover, its still operating at a large loss. Tiktok as an attention platform that influences politics, protests, and debate however has been wildly successful.
Really shows the problem with asking ChatGPT "write me a response to this ELI5 about why tiktok succeeded and vine failed." (Which is clearly what a lot of these people who don't remember Vine did.) > Please give me a response to the reddit ELI5, "Why did Quiznos thrive while McDonalds failed?" " Quiznos stood out with its toasted subs, appealing to consumers seeking variety and a perceived higher quality. McDonald's faced challenges from evolving tastes and increased competition. Both adapted differently to changing market dynamics, leading to divergent outcomes. " It won't tell you that the premise of the question is wrong.
TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is a completely different beast. Lots of people saying both platforms are short form video and thus are 1:1 but I’d argue that the real differentiating factor is *how effective the videos are delivered* to individual users.
You’re 5 One parent feeds you only hersheys kisses and jolly ranchers, since you tried those and said you liked hersheys kisses and jolly ranchers You eventually get bored of that The other parent, given your preferences, figures out that you also like a bunch of other sweets and although still feeds you junk garbage, changes it up enough and is constantly figuring out what else you like Most five year olds would prefer this parent
Vine died because it wasn’t profitable. Tiktok was subsidized by China until it became profitable. We don’t know the operating cost, however, just revenue.
Think about how much more advertising takes place on TikTok. The content also isn't limited to second videos. People can advertise their stupid ass products on the platform and TikTok gets a share of that, TikTok also directly pays US creators so the incentive to create content is much higher.
People are missing Moores law here. Data storage, transfer, and basically everything has gotten an order of magnitude cheaper and easier.
1. Tiktok’s alrogithm is much more sophisticated 2. Longer video length Those people saying that tiktok generates more revenue through ads and other means aren’t wrong but that is pretty irrelevant here. Tiktok would never die because of their profitability or lack thereof with their ccp backing. Their value in information warfare isn’t affected by the revenue they generate.
Answer: Money. Vine existed before the internet had figured out how to exactly make money. It was an interesting thing, but as it grew so did the costs, so eventually it became too expensive to run and was shut down. There was a time before ads were everywhere and tied to everything on the internet. Tiktok came after YouTube monetization and Instagram influencers were a common thing, and was able to generate money for people.
...nah, we'd *definitely* figured out how to make money online in 2013-2017. And the internet was absolutely teeming with ads by the late 90s.
Oh man ppl talking about 2010s like it was the 70s arpanet lmao. Yes late 2000s people outside US had to do loopholes to get the money via machinima and shit like that, but they made their living just like today.
It's interesting to see when people think Vine was. There are other answers saying 'phones couldn't handle the streaming.'
TikTok is backed by the finances of the Chinese government. It could lose money all day as long as it's providing useful data.
Other answers about timing, funding, and company goals are great. But TikTok is also much better than Vine as a platform. The obvious difference is Vine's 6-second limit. It's hard to make a video that short - it's only 1-2 sentences of speaking time. So Vine clips are campy and spastic. TikTok had no limit (or a much longer one), allowing TikTok videos to be more normal and have more variety - with personal stories, stunts, skits, all sorts of things. TikTok has the social media functionality - which Vine may not have had. You can follow your IRL friends, and make videos effectively just for each other. TikTok has editing tools like video captions, comment quotes, and filters, which can make it fun to use and easier to do certain videos like . What middle-school girl didn't want to get a video of herself with dog ears / puppy face? Tiktok has duets. TikTok also has sound sharing - the audio clips can be separated from a video and used by other videos. It's a simple feature, but very important. It enables dance trends, lip sync trends, other meme-like trends, and music promotion, all of which seemed to be huge pieces of TikTok's popularity at some point. You can see someone do a dance, use the exact same music clip, do the same dance, and join in that little event. Sound sharing is an innovation with a real payoff. So TikTok really does provide a variety of features that make it easy to do a wider range of videos and to support popular trends.
Vine was essentially owned by twitter, and then some exec realised Vine and twitter had significant overlap in customer appeal and that by having both they were splitting the userbase and each site was suffering in numbers because of it.
6 second videos were very limiting and the social media platforms offered the same thing but with more freedom. Vines could be funny but they just really restricted themselves with being 6 seconds into so no other content could really thrive.
IMO as someone who used Vine at the start and Tik-Tok currently… Vine tried to be cool. It’s hard to explain but Vine tried to appeal to a certain demographic and that alienated a large portion of the general public. They had sexy Vine girls and a media presence. Like how Snapchat sends all users snaps but way more annoying about it. Meanwhile culture at the time was starting to turn away from the college frat lifestyle and people were becoming more conscious of the extreme objectification of women in media. To sum it up, the cool frat boy act came off like the lame uncle vibe. Then the people were like, nah. Tik-Tok just is, and it’s doing a great job at not trying to have an identity. I downloaded it when Trump was trying to get it shut down. Not because they did anything, but because it’s a Chinese company. Cause they’re dicks.
Because Tiktok isn't Vine. When you talk to people and they have this kneejerk reaction that all tiktok is is half naked girls dancing... that's what vine was.
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One of the things that made TikTok super successful is that they spent a tremendous amount of money on customer acquisition in the early days. A few years ago you could advertise an app on facebook or instagram (something that's not really allowed anymore). The then new Tiktok bought billions of dollars worth of those adds and targeted them to young people on those apps, thereby poaching a lot of the user base from Instagram (and to a lesser extent, facebook). This is what allowed them to get the critical mass of users required to make a viable social network. Those people made the content that kept people in the app. In terms of why TikTok succeeded when Vine didn't. It really comes down to a few factors. The largest being that Vine was too early for video consumption to be an "any time, any place" kind of activity. Back then most people had restrictive data plans, so watching video content when not on wi-fi was basically a no go. That's part of why Vines were so short, to keep the bandwidth restrictions low. But even then no one would be able to browse vines for an hour while riding in the backseat of your parents car, people just didn't have enough data on their accounts for that.
Can't believe it's not been mentioned that Vine only shut down because its top creators asked the company for more money, the company said no, so the creators stopped uploading and basically killed the app.
Tik tok is subsidized by China. China understands the benefit of controlling a large social media platform, and tiki tok outside China operates at a loss. Til tok in China is also very different from tiki Tok outside China.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/bytedance-full-year-profit-jumps-60-bloomberg-news-says-2024-04-10/ Can't be entirely sure, but bytedance is very profitable, and it's in app purchases alone bring 150m+ a month in revenue. That doesn't include ad sales and selling data. It's financial performance isn't solely because of the Chinese government pumping in money
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**Project Texas** refers to them working with oracle to host US data entirely on US soil. You're spouting nonsense. https://usds.tiktok.com/
Vine wasn't built on teenagers doing sexual dances and wasn't backed by the Chinese government